Ted Cruz has a vision: President Ted Cruz, the first U.S. President born in another country. From a family of Cuban fascists who found Texas compatible with their authoritarian ideology, Cruz is eager to implement a plan to force Obama to rescind his executive action delaying the deportation of Hispanic and Asian immigrants whose children are U.S. citizens. Right wing propaganda writer Byron York, writing for the Washington Examiner, a Republican weekly owned by fascist Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, explained Cruz's seemly demented strategy in his column Friday.York delves into the question of why Republicans want to fight Obama now while Democrats still control the Senate instead of waiting a few weeks when the GOP has a 54-seat majority and can start passing all the deranged legislation that comes out of the House. "When Republicans, or conservatives, or anyone else," he wrote, "announce what they think Mitch McConnell and John Boehner should do in the next few weeks, they should remember that right now Republicans have the same strength and numbers they had in October 2013, when they lost the government shutdown fight." He notes that the extremists, led by Cruz, have nearly as little trust in McConnell and Boehner to force Obama's hand as they do in Reid and Pelosi.
"I think we should fund virtually the entire federal government," Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, a leader in the last shutdown fight, said at a Capitol Hill rally Wednesday. "We should, however, not be funding illegal amnesty." As he did in the Obamacare fight, Cruz wants to see the House attach a rider defunding the immigration action to a spending bill-- a measure that has to be passed by Dec. 11 for the government to stay open-- and send it to the Democratic Senate. What happens after that, after Majority Leader Reid rejects it, is not clear.Cruz advocates action now, he says, because GOP leaders can't be trusted to fight on immigration next year. "Even with a Republican House and Senate, the same folks who are saying 'Gosh, we can't do anything now' in January are going to say 'Gosh, we don’t have 60 votes in the Senate,' " Cruz continued. "It's like Charlie Brown and Lucy."A headline by Breitbart News-- "Boehner Crafts Surrender Plan on Obama Executive Amnesty"-- echoes the idea that GOP leaders will back down even when they have full control of Congress. It's a view that is shared by many conservatives, from Twitter devotees to radio talk-show hosts.Underneath it all is a toxic distrust among Hill Republicans. In conversations and email exchanges in the past few days-- none of it for attribution and some of it completely off the record-- GOP aides on both sides of the issue have expressed deep suspicion of the other side's motives."Conservative Republicans believe leadership will cave to Obama because conservative Republicans are not stupid," said one GOP aide. "Leadership is bound and determined to never have a funding fight on executive amnesty.""Ask them what their backup plan is after the government shuts down," said another GOP aide, referring to the forces who want action now. "They don't have one. They know their plan is a dead-end strategy, but they don't care. All they care about is making themselves look good to the Heritage Action/purity-for-profit crowd."...There is no doubt Republicans will be stronger next year; the difference between having 54 votes in the Senate, as they will then, and having 45, as they do now, is all the difference in the world. And most conservatives would probably approve of Boehner and McConnell waiting until January or February-- if only the conservatives trusted the leadership to act.That is where the distrust comes in. In the past few years there has been so much bad blood between the GOP's conservative, Tea Party wing and the party Establishment that, now that they're all in power, they might be ill-prepared, and perhaps even unable, to work together.
This is all a win-win for Cruz because the 2016 Republican nomination will be largely determined not by the back room bosses and billionaires who favor Establishment puppets like Jeb Bush and Paul Ryan, but by the zombies whose brains have been taken over by Hate Talk Radio and Fox-- the Cruz crowd. If they shut down the government to force Obama's hand and millions of people are hurt, why should Cruz care? It will make him stronger to the martyrdom-seeking fringe. And if a few dozen Republicans in non-Confederate states lose their seats in 2016... Cruz is just as happy to see them go as many progressives were to see Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu lose this year. And Jim DeMint is happy as a pig in shit as his reactionary donors flood Heritage with funds.Will Boehner & McConnell allow Cruz & King to set the GOP immigration agenda-- no matter what the cost?
